Contractors, Yard Team Up On Navy Bids

Companies Seek To Build Class Of New Warships

Newport News Shipbuilding will team up with three other defense contractors to bid on the Navy's next generation of amphibious warships, the yard announced Monday.

"This is very significant for us," said Mike Hatfield, vice president of communications.

For the past 16 years, the shipyard has built only nuclear-powered vessels for the Navy.

Newport News Shipbuilding will join Ingalls Shipbuilding of Mississippi, National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. of California and Lockheed Martin Government Electronic Systems of New Jersey in bidding on the deal, which would be worth up to $5 billion for 12 ships.

Analysts predict the Navy will ask early next year for bids to design, build and maintain the ships and award the deal before the end of September.

So far only one other team - made up of Avondale Industries in Louisiana and Bath Iron Works of Maine - has said it will compete for the deal.

"Clearly the major shipbuilders of America are on one of these two teams," Hatfield said.

The team approach marks a departure from the normal process in which yards bid independently for projects and then compete fiercely for them, said Guy Stitt, a naval analyst with AMI International.

"They'd rather have a piece of the pie than none of it," Stitt said.

Newport News knows what its like to get none of it. After years of building Navy submarines, the Clinton administration had said it would buy all its subs from Electric Boat in Groton, Conn., and the yard had to win a rigorous battle to continue competing for the vessels.

But those battles aren't cheap, Stitt said.

"The yards had to consider how much it was going to cost them to go after the business," Stitt said.

Repairing and building conventionally powered Navy vessels is part of the yard's plan to stay afloat in a future with fewer contracts for the yard's mainstay products - carriers and submarines.

Ingalls and Avondale both have long histories building Navy amphibious ships. Most recently Ingalls focused on Wasp-class assault vessels while Avondale built Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ships.

"Ingalls is really the leader here," Stitt said.

But Newport News and National Steel also have experience building amphibious ships. In 1969 and 1970 the Peninsula yard completed three Charleston-class vessels while National Steel built more than a dozen Newport-class tank landing vessels. Lockheed Martin brings to the project its expertise in ship and combat systems integration.

"This team of ship designers and producers has an overwhelming wealth of experience in lead yard design and construction, combat systems integration and life cycle fleet support," Newport News President William P. Fricks said.

The next generation of amphibious ships - now known by the Navy designation LPD-17 - will be completely different from current designs, Stitt said. The ships will replace four classes of vessels, each more than 20 years old.

"It's probably the only new class of ships coming up for a long, long time," Hatfield said. "It's clear that this is going to be a unique ship, as you would expect in a new class."

The way Newport News and Ingalls would build it is new, too.

Newport News would build and outfit the 11,000-ton aft section of each vessel and float it to Mississippi, where Ingalls would join it with the forward half of the ship.